


Pulse

by EysabellePerfume



Category: Cowboy Bebop (Anime)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 15:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20048647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EysabellePerfume/pseuds/EysabellePerfume
Summary: "Faye Valentine never put a bullet into another human being. Not intentionally, and not by accident. So I wasn't much surprised, after those five shots, to hear the Swordfish take off."





	Pulse

**Author's Note:**

> Another moldy oldy from when I wrote as Pangaea.

Faye Valentine never put a bullet into another human being. Not intentionally, and not by accident. So I wasn't much surprised, after those five shots, to hear the Swordfish take off. Not much surprised at all. I wondered about her technique. It could be she was actually a pretty good marksman, to be that consistently bad.

We assign certain things to the women in our lives. It's a division of labor that seems to make sense at the time. I take the stoicism, you take the passion. I take the silences, you take the outbursts. I didn't have time for Faye's tantrum. I was too busy being male. 

After all, I had an important job to do. I polished that spot on the window, over and over, until the motion devolved, grew gentle, and I realized I was thinking of wiping Faye's tears. And that scared the hell out of me, because I knew she was crying, I knew why she was crying, and I knew that, for once, since she wasn't moved by spite or pique or greed, I couldn't ignore her.

I tucked the cloth into my pocket and limped off to find her. Didn't take long. She stood in the hallway with her back against the wall. Her head hung down. Spasms jerked her fingers. She wept quietly, with intermittent and unladylike snorts. Her gun lay at her feet.

She knew I was there without looking up. Maybe she'd been waiting for me.

She said, "It's one thing, to know intellectually that everybody you ever loved is probably dead. And that's a lonely thing, for certain. But it's not real -- not really real -- until you remember just exactly who it was you lost."

"Don't tell me you actually loved Spike."

She threw her head back, tears and hair flying. "Are you stupid?" she demanded. She sounded as if she had a cold, she was so congested from crying. "Or are you just hard of hearing? I said everybody, Jet. Everybody, ever."

I backed up a step and held up my hands. "Sorry."

"Stupid," she said. "He knew." She slid down into a crouch, her arms resting on her knees. "He understood what it was like."

"Losing the woman, you mean," I said.

Furious again. "Her name was Julia, you fucking fuck! Julia! She was a real person! She had a real life!"

"Stop shouting at me."

"The woman. Fucking hell. Like she was a paper doll or a checking account or an umbrella. No wonder your girl left you."

I shrugged. That wound couldn't hurt me any more.

"Give me a cigarette," she said. I lit two and gave one to her. She'd begun to weep again.

"Think how it must have been for him," she said at last. "You know that moment when you lie in the arms of your lover and feel her heart beating, and really understand, for the first time, just how living and real she is?" She didn't wait for an answer. She probably would have yelled at me just for opening my mouth. "Think, then, of holding her and feeling that heartbeat just ... stop." 

"This is morbid, Faye."

"Of course it is." She let her cigarette drop from her fingers, and slowly stood. "He understood. That's all I'm saying. It's really too bad he left. We could have been a club. 'Le beau valet de Coeur et la dame de pique causent sinistrement de leurs amours defunts.' Christ. Isn't it amazing, the things you remember, once you can remember?"

That came as only a mild surprise ... a sideshow that couldn't really divert me from the main event. "Your memory's really back? How long?"

"For three magical days. Starting the night I left? You really are stupid, aren't you?"

I was suddenly tired of her. "Good-bye, Faye."

And then, without warning, she panicked. "Oh God, oh God! Not you, too!" 

I took her by the shoulders. "Stop it. I'm right here."

"For how long?"

"For as long as it takes."

"I have no idea what that means," she said.

"Neither do I." 

She shuddered. "Oh God. He's going to be dead." 

"Faye, calm down." 

"Will we know it when it happens? Will we feel it?" 

"I don't know." 

"Jet. His heart is going to stop beating." 

"I know." 

"He won't be breathing." 

"No. He won't." 

"It's too much. I can't stand it."

"You can. You will."

"No, no, I can't." She butted her head against my chest, over and over, like a goat kid, trying to find a way inside me. As if I were the nearest safe place. I felt sorry for her. What did she have to prepare herself for this, anyway? She had always been adrift in this time, our time, without a frame of reference. She had no center. Flippant, arrogant, catty, as if she'd learned it from a manual ... just a thin veneer over an emptiness, a loss. Like the thin veneer of civilization over Spike, who was just like a cat, with no emotional attachment to any of us, no depth of feeling, nothing at stake ...

"Faye, I have to sit down now."

"Oh God. Your leg." She ducked under my good arm, to assist me. I didn't need it. She knew it, too. "Old soldier," she said. I couldn't tell if she were affectionate, or exasperated, or both at once.

We sat down together on the yellow couch. She stayed with her shoulders under my arm. The novelty of this, though not unpleasant, was just another sideshow. We were both far away from each other, holding our own personal, internal vigils. Now that she'd put the idea into my head, I wondered if we would feel it, his moment of death. It seemed unlikely. We weren't seers, like Bull. We were too worldly, too short-sighted, to be able to read signs and portents in the sky.

It might have been an hour later, when she shifted against me, closer, and rested her head against my chest. "As long as it takes, Jet?" she said.

"As long as it takes."

"Whatever that means."

I rested my fingertips against the side of her throat, and waited until I felt her pulse there, steady, and warm, and strong.

"Whatever that means," I agreed.

\-------------------------------------  
The French is from "Spleen" by Charles Baudelaire. Richard Howard, in the excellent Godine edition of Les Fleurs du Mal, translates these lines as "... the dapper Knave of Hearts and the Queen of Spades/grimly disinter their love affairs." I figure if Jet can go around quoting Goethe, Faye, with her unknown past, can most certainly quote Baudelaire.


End file.
